Office 7.0 Beta 3 (stage one) is final… for now!

I’m not going to make any final “beauty” shots of the current state because there’s not much point in doing that until the other half of the office completes the current ensemble and that won’t be for quite a number of months yet. I’ll just have to make do with this setup in the meantime. And yes, you can imagine it’s painful and under-powered and under-monitored, and boy am I missing the extra pixels… not. 🙂

I’m quite happy with the 3 x 2560 x 1600, actually. But of course, the office won’t be complete until it’s complete. And besides, my camera gear is all in The Netherlands anyway, so there’s no point in trying to create perfect RAW shots and then editing them for a final “beauty” pass.

There’s a server, a workstation, a second workstation, a Mac Pro, the MacBook Air, and the Clevo laptop. That should be enough for the intermediate stages of getting up and running. The three Lian-Li cases look nice together and all have watercooling for the CPU’s. ATI 6970 Eyefinity cards take care of the two workstations, each of them hooked to the 3 x 30 inch Dell U3011 monitors using StarTech DisplayPort switches to allow for an extra set of DisplayPort ports on each monitor. The server is hooked up via DVI connection (and also capable of doing 2560×1200) while the Mac Pro is using 3 x DVI where one of those is run from a mini DisplayPort port via an Apple converter that turns it into full dual-link DVI.

Things are going well here in Oakley. I got my work authorization a few weeks ago. Which was a huge surprise because it came 10 weeks before the government said it would. Also, the last of my “burdens of development life” is now luckily no longer an issue, leaving me free to get involved in new fun projects. In fact, I am talking to some interested parties about some real interesting top secret “stealth projects”.

Hi,
I really like your office, you are The Man ;-). I am your big fan for years.
Please, post specification of your new workstations and server.
I am really curious and waiting for months for some more technical detail O:-).
Thank you very mutch.
Mark

The specs are not really all that impressive, though. I only bought the new systems since I need some stuff before I can get the other office consolidated (and upgraded/replaced, etc.) and finish the “full” office.

I myself have a Lian-Li PC-P80B Case, is your PC-P80 case a ‘B’ or a ‘N’ ?

If it is either of the two, how did you manage to mount the cooler?

I am basically building a new system now and am wanting to use the H100. It has two 120mm fans, so I am finding it hard to see how the cooler fits inside nicely in the Lian-Li PC-P80B, since there is only one 140mm fan on top and one 120mm fan on the back.
The Lian-Li PC-P80N has two 140mm fans on the top and one 120mm fans on the back.

I have also thought about changing to a Lian-Li PC-P80N to mount the H100 on the top nicely, but even then I will still need to mod because of the different fan size’s. of course unless I mount it to the back where the 120mm fan is, but then i thought it will be in the way of the gfx I/O ports.

You’re right about the H100 not really fitting in there. We came to this conclusion a little after the fact but the guys that built my machines managed to make it fit well enough by zip-tying it to the top bars of the case.

There is a part of the H100 that angles a bit downward and extends into the upper drive bay but since there’s nothing there it didn’t matter much.

In retrospect I should’ve gone for a smaller model but the H100 still does a really nice job the way it was fitted in the first machine so I decided to have them do the same for the other two as well.

If you’re concerned about making a perfect fit, then definitely, no, the H100 and P80 (I think they are B models, not N) won’t fit properly.

“The specs are not really all that impressive, though” hahaha i know too many people who would to have at least the less powerfull of your machines, anyway my main Workstation is a i7 @2.66 (not oced) with 12 gig RAM and almost 2.5 Tb storage, an HP dv6000 and a HP DV7 lappies, something we have in common is a Linksys wireless router bundled with DD-WRT firmware wich rocks!!! but im looking to upgrade it to other DD-WRT capable Cisco router, cheers.

LOL! Well, ok. What I should’ve written is that they’re not as impressive as the specs of some of the machines in the 6.0 Office back on the other continent. In particular the “Pentane” workstation with 3 x nVidia C2070’s to provide some CUDA power. 🙂

It’s the D-Link DSR-500 I’m using for the actual internet routing. The LinkSys with DD-WRT is what I use to play/test some things with and to provide a “WiFi backdoor” directly into the LAN.

Not all that hot, really. I have central air conditioning in the house as well as an additional 12.000 BTU portable air conditioner to deal with the heat out here in this area. Of course, it can get a little noisy with that running. 🙂

I’m looking into buying a portable AC unit for my home office. Could you tell me what model you currently have? I want to make sure I get one that will actually cool my equipment. I’ve read many reviews going either way with portable AC units so I figured I would see what your experiences and opinions are.

It’s an LG 12000 BTU model. But don’t buy what I bought simply because I bought it. Getting a good fitting AC can be quite involved and you need to look at a lot of details like the size of the room it needs to cool, how long the hose is and whether you can extend it or not and if you can’t extend it whether the system will work or whether the extension will make it run less efficient (which means you need a bigger model to make up for the difference), etc.

Also, you have to make sure you have enough fuses/circuits to handle an AC because those things suck power like crazy. Anywhere from 900 to 2000 Watt is not uncommon.

I had to go for a portable unit because window units and wall units wouldn’t work out with the layout of the office. A split unit also wouldn’t work too well since it would require some additional work to get that installed. So a portable one was the only option and it had to have a long enough hose (which it didn’t) so I had to extend that myself with some ductape and diameter converters to get more “tubing” on there to get it out the window from the bathroom that is at the back of the office.

Ha! You’ll be shocked… It’s a Z506. Cheap, simple, effective. I considered the Z906 and larger sets but the reality is that I normally use my headphones. And the Sennheiser HD800 is a $1500 item which I sense is going to continue to produce a better and clearer sound than any Logitech speaker set. 🙂

It’s not too bad. The water cooling uses some fans and there’s a few in the front of the main systems, etc. so there definitely is some fan noise. These things are not completely noise-free. However, the thing that really produces more noise than anything combined is the additional portable A/C unit. 🙂

If you’re referring to the desks in the pictures on this page (office 7.0, still a work in progress), the desks are several combinations of the IKEA Galant line of office desks. They hold up a lot of weight. Not as good as my other desks in the other (6.0) office but certainly stable and strong enough.

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